Old academy in Catskill may become housing for artists, emergency shelter

CATSKILL >> A deal is near for developer Saltire-Phoenix LLC to purchase the former St. Patrick’s Academy for use as artist apartments and a community emergency shelter.

The proposed project was discussed during a Town Board meeting Tuesday, with Saltire-Phoenix co-owner Victor Cornelius saying the project would involve subdividing more than half of the 11.5-acre property for sale as a residential lot.

“We came up with the idea of starting to repurpose the site,” he said. “The high school would have 16 to 18 residential and working units primarily geared to artists who are coming out of (New York City) and coming up the valley as things get too expensive down there. We’re looking at it being a middle-income site.”

St. Patrick’s Academy was used as a school from 1960 to 2007 and is currently under control of a holding company for the Archdiocese of Albany.

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“The church has not been maintained appropriately,” Cornelius said. “The roofs of the two largest structures are beginning to open up.”

Cornelius said the academy’s gym could be used for municipal recreation programs.

“The Community Center has said they would love to have it as an additional site to their existing facility if we restore it,” he said. “The floor is beginning to warp but in actuality we see it as a restoration project.”

Developers would also restore the convent and turn it into an administrative office for the apartments, using the former nuns’ bedroom units as emergency shelter housing.

“It would be a very short term, two or three nights, residential emergency services unit should there be another flood or a collapse in the electrical grid,” Cornelius said.

He declined to say how much has been offered for the property but a listing on Coldwell Banker showed the property, which has frontage on the Hudson River, being marketed at $699,000.

Cornelius said the section of the property without buildings would be sold as a residential lot to cover the cost of the purchase while grants would cover renovations of the structures. He added that the property would also return to the tax rolls under a payment-in-lieu-of-taxes plan.

“I don’t believe we will get the change in zoning without putting a large portion of the property back on the tax rolls as residential housing,” he said.

“I think that’s that village’s priority, to increase its tax rolls, which we support,” Cornelius said. “We don’t see the residential portion as being a cul de sac of a lot of little houses. I think we’re looking at it as maybe being one or two.”